


e. culicivora

by AGlassRoseNeverFades



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Marvel, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Autistic Peter Parker, Blood, Blood & Gore, Boxes are designated by font weight instead of colors like my other verse, COMPLETED AS IS, Could be seen as an AU of an AU I guess, Deadpool Thought Boxes, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I can't write these boys without the fluff in there too, Intrusive Thoughts, M/M, Not the same universe as my other one even though Peter is still autistic, Schizophrenic Wade Wilson, Temporary Character Death, Vampire AU, Vampire Peter Parker, believe it or not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2018-11-30 13:04:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11464179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AGlassRoseNeverFades/pseuds/AGlassRoseNeverFades
Summary: Peter never thought his life could get any crazier than what happened to him after the spider's bite. Another bite of a different sort changes all that.In which Peter Parker undergoes yet another transformation and believes he no longer deserves good things. Wade Wilson is a man on a mission determined to prove to him otherwise.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Evarcha culicivora,_ a species of jumping spider found around Lake Victoria in Kenya and Uganda. Commonly known as the Vampire Spider.

“Doctor Morbius?” Peter calls out into the darkened warehouse, equal parts wary and concerned. Wary because _hello,_ he’s fighting a half-crazed, blood-starved living _vampire_ in total darkness now after the guy just smashed him— _painfully,_ he might add—into the building’s breaker panel and caused all the lights to go out. Now he’s at a disadvantage because while the spider coding overwriting certain parts of his DNA might mean he has slightly better night vision than the average human, it’s nothing compared to that of a being like Michael Morbius who literally _thrives_ in the shadows.

Concerned, because he knows if the other man were fully cognizant and aware of his actions right now, he would absolutely hate himself for the havoc he’s caused to this city since he showed up and started going on his own little one-man, blood-soaked rampage.

Dr. Michael Morbius is not actually a bad guy, Peter knows from previous encounters with him in the past. They’ve even worked together a couple of times when the situation was in dire need of a pair of capable biochemists on hand—well, one biochemist and one biochem/biophysics grad student. The point is he knows that this monster is not who Morbius really is, that this psychotic break he seems to be having is likely the result of another attempt to cure himself of his vampirism gone horribly wrong, and that if he can just detain the man for long enough maybe he’ll come down from it on his own and actually come in peacefully.

It’s the biggest reason he decided to run ahead and leave Wade behind in the dust in hopes that he could get enough time alone with the vampire to maybe talk some sense back into him. The moment his trigger-happy boyfriend started literally bringing out the big guns—understandably really, considering they know Morbius’s attacks have resulted in at least two deaths and who knows how many injured already, so Peter can’t even be _mad_ at Wade for his no-holds-barred approach even if Morbius is technically almost an old friend—he knew that bringing him along would not be conducive to the whole ‘talking him down’ thing.

“Morbius,” he calls out again. “Listen, I _know_ you’re still you in there. You’re probably feeling pretty scared right now. Me too, to be totally honest with you,” he adds with a tiny nervous chuckle. “But if you come in quietly, we can figure out what’s wrong, get you some hel—”

He cuts off, spidey sense and what little vision he has in this low lighting just enough to warn him as the vampire stealthily returns and takes a huge swipe with one taloned hand clearly meant to take his head clean off.

“Okay, guess you’re _really_ not in the mood to talk. _Got it,”_ he says, and kick-flips himself backwards in time to dodge another blow. Spidey drops back into fighting stance and decides that he’s not going to hold back nearly as much of his strength as he normally would. He knows from past experience that Morbius’s almost supernatural stamina far outpaces his own, so the goal here is take him down hard and _fast._ If the vampire gets a broken rib or two in the process, so be it. He _did_ just try to kill Spider-Man, after all.

For a little while, it’s all just a blur of dodging attacks and trying to land a few punches of his own, but both of them are fairly evenly matched in terms of speed and agility, so not much progress is being made so far.

He whoops for joy when one of his kicks _finally_ lands and knocks the other guy back into the concrete pillar behind him. The sense of victory is short-lived, however, as the force of impact is apparently powerful enough to shift the damn thing and cause a couple of large, heavy chunks of ceiling to come barreling down towards the dazed villain.

“Oh crap,” Peter says, and instinctively jumps in to push the other man out of the way. He’s able to roll out of the way of most of the debris himself, but not all of it. Unfortunately, this results in him being pinned to the floor in a really awkward position that allows for little mobility or leverage to push it off right away.

He’s also a bit dazed himself now, and _yep,_ that’s a pretty bad gash he can feel cutting into his abdomen, complicating his ability to push upwards even further. It’ll be at least a few seconds before he has his bearings back enough to maneuver himself out from under all of this and be back in fighting form.

Unfortunately, in this business, seconds mean everything.

He grunts in pain as Morbius, now no longer dazed himself, pounces and lands sprightly onto the largest piece of paneling on top of him, causing more blood to seep out of the wound hidden underneath. The man above cocks his head eerily, scenting the air like a wild animal.

“Dude… _don’t…”_ he tries to say weakly. It speaks to how far the man truly is gone, however, that without even a second’s hesitation he bends down and rips away the part of Spidey’s suit covering his throat, and with a snarl like a starving beast latches two rows of jagged teeth right into the sensitive flesh exposed there. Peter screams.

He tries to jerk away and buck the other man off, but the grip on his shoulders to hold him in place is surprisingly strong, and Peter’s own strength is rapidly fading fast.

A loud crash, like a door being kicked open, and early dawn light suddenly streams in, too bright for his sensitive eyes which have gotten used to the darkness of the room, causing him to rapidly blink tears out of them as they readjust. The _thing_ latched onto his neck screeches angrily in the back of its throat but makes no actual move to abandon its prey, mindless, continuing to drink and _drink_ in spite of the rising sun brightening the whole area around them now. Peter thinks he might be sick, though it’s a toss-up at this point whether that’ll be before or after he faints from the blood loss.

The heavy spray of semi-automatic gunfire ripping into the monster’s shoulder _is_ enough to finally dislodge him, at least. Peter lets his head fall back against the floor with a thunk, too dizzy and exhausted to care what’s happening around him anymore. He hears more gunfire, more screeching, then another loud crash of splintering wood and glass like something just went through one of the boarded up windows near the back.

His rescuer curses and runs toward him on heavily booted footsteps. Peter whimpers as the man overexerts himself to push the debris off him, enough at last to be able to lift Peter up slightly by the armpits and pull him out from under it the rest of the way. He knows without opening his eyes that it’s Wade. _Who else brings a semi-automatic rifle to a vampire fight?_ he thinks to himself with a small delirious giggle.

“Baby boy, _shit,_ we’ve gotta get you looked at,” the merc fusses worriedly over him.

“S’okay, I’ll be fine,” he slurs tiredly. His healing factor will take care of the wounds and the blood loss. All he needs is a good long nap and he’ll be good to go, he tells himself.

It’s Wade’s turn to chuckle nervously. “Yeah, no, I don’t think so, babe. You need a doctor.”

_“Noooo,”_ he whines. The only doctor he trusts is Bruce, and he’s out Hulking it up with the other Avengers in Latveria right now. “No…hospitals…” he huffs out, reminding Wade of their one rule. He can’t go to any type of civilian clinic with his injuries and risk having his secret identity exposed. “Just take me home. _Please.”_

“Baby boy, this is serious. Besides, what if you’re…y’know, _infected?”_

_Don’t be silly,_ he wants to say. He’s been scratched in fights with Morbius before and always been _fine_ afterwards. And besides, it’s not like a civvie doctor would know what to do with him anyway. He wants to say those things, but all that comes out is a soft, _“Shhhh,”_ while he lifts a finger to Wade’s mouth to keep him silent.

Then there’s nothing else, as fatigue finally overtakes him and he passes out in Wade’s arms.

*

“Yeah, his wounds have closed up fine, but he’s still got that fever and hasn’t woken up for more than a few minutes in almost _three days,”_ Wade stresses into the phone. He listens carefully to what Banner has to say on the other end of the line, but no amount of assurances that he’ll be back in New York in a few days to oversee Peter’s care directly is enough to alleviate his concern. Nothing is going to reassure him until Peter wakes up coherent for once and for longer than it takes to be helped to the bathroom and have a couple of spoonfuls of soup shoveled down his throat.

“Uh huh,” he says once a response is expected from him again. “Sure, I’ll keep you updated,” he adds before hanging up. _“Fucking useless,”_ he growls down at the phone in his hand.

**‘We should punch him as soon as he gets back for being so goddamn complacent about this,’** Bold, aka Yellow, growls into his ear.

_‘You mean after he figures out whatever the hell is wrong with Petey,’_ Italics, otherwise known in other mediums as White, corrects.

**‘I know what I’m about, son.’**

“He has to sound like that on the phone,” Wade defends, even though truth be known he’s just as pissed. “Gotta stay calm since the big guy isn’t so great at giving medical advice.”

**‘Medical advice?! All he’s done is told us to keep him hydrated on fucking water and chicken noodle soup and try to keep the fever down. A toddler would know that shit!’**

_‘Says the one who insisted a hot sponge bath in the sexy nurse’s outfit would be just the ticket to healing our boy right up.’_

**‘And I stand by it! Hey, haven’t we been waiting for him to get sick just so we’d have the opportunity to do exactly that??’**

“Sick like the sniffles,” Wade points out. “Not sick like… _this.”_ As he says it, he leans forward to readjust the cool washcloth over his practically comatose lover’s forehead and eyes. It’s already starting to dry out and will need to be replaced again soon. He’s so pale all over, but his face is flushed. This fever is like nothing Wade has ever seen a person endure and actually _live_ through before.

_‘Speaking of the elephant in the room…’_ Wade growls softly in warning. They’ve been over this once before already. He doesn’t like thinking about it. _‘I’m just saying, what if the next time he wakes up is the last time?’_

“Shut the fuck up.”

_‘You wanna look that sweet lady who raised him in the eye and tell her she had a chance to say goodbye, but we refused to call her because we were too fucking stubborn to see what was happening right in front of us?’_

“I said. SHUT. UP.” Wade glances over guiltily at the boy who moans a little in his sleep, not sure if it’s a coincidence or because of all the noise. It’s enough to remind him either way to drop back down to his inside voice.

“I told you once already,” he whispers furiously. “Petey-pie would kill us if we let May see him like this. Besides, it’s a moot point anyway because _he’s going to be fine.”_

_‘You keep telling yourself that, chief.’_

**‘Uhh, guys? What about the…other elephant?’** Both Wade and Italics grow silent at this. **‘I mean, mysterious fever and an uber-long nappy time right after he gets chowed down on by Edward Cullen’s fugly ass cousin? I’m less worried about bae not waking up and more concerned about him waking up DIFFERENT.’**

“I can’t believe you’re still referencing Twilight after all these years,” Wade grouses.

_‘He…actually has a point though.’_

**‘You don’t have to sound so surprised.’**

“Peter said that guy’s a different type of vamp though. Less of a supernatural curse deal and more like a disease.”

_‘What do we know about diseases?’_ Italics leads tellingly.

**_‘They spread,’_** he and Bold both announce in chorus. **‘Hah!’** Bold crows. **‘Twinsies!!’**

_‘Ugh. You ruin everything cool.’_

“One thing at a time, guys,” Wade tells them, standing up to stretch and pop his neck. He can’t be bothered to deal with hypotheticals right now. “Let’s just focus on taking care of Pete and hoping he wakes up soon. We can sort out the rest later.”

*

One moment, everything hurts, just heat and pain and memories of Wade’s voice and a vague sense of too much time going by since he last felt like getting out of bed.

The next moment, it stops. Well, not quite. Rather, the fatigue weighing his limbs down and sapping him of his strength vanishes, almost as if it were never there, and the agony which had been radiating seemingly throughout every cell in his body suddenly narrows and gathers up to concentrate solely in one spot on the inside of his throat.

He coughs, trying to dissipate the feeling, but that only makes it worse. Sitting up, a damp cloth slides off his face and lands with a plop into his lap. It’s a bad sensory day too, he thinks, blinking against the riot of colors in his apartment that assaults his eyes as soon as he opens them. Wade is nowhere around but Peter doesn’t worry about that, concentrating instead on standing on wobbly legs and shuffling his way tiredly to the kitchen.

He grabs the first thing in the refrigerator within reach, a near-full carton of orange juice, and chugs it down quickly. It decidedly does _not_ help, the scratchy burn in his throat still agonizing and followed up now by an angry, empty clench in his stomach. He’s _starving,_ he realizes, and the juice does exactly zilch to help with that, yet even the thought of food right now makes him nauseous. It’s not what he needs.

He whines, a wailing piteous thing, and curls his spine forward in a hunch. He’s too wrapped up in his pity party for one at first to take notice of the sound of a key turning in the lock behind him.

The front door opens, and all crying immediately ceases. Peter’s spine straightens. The empty carton slips and falls from numb fingers to the floor.

He smells him before he sees him, hears the thudding of his delicious heart before he ever hears his voice, words his brain doesn’t even bother trying to parse, having already reprioritized itself to focus on one thing only.

“Baby boy?” Wade tries again, worried when Peter doesn’t respond and continues to stand there stiffly in place with his back to him. The boxes are eerily silent, thrumming instead with a nervous tension which heightens when he drops his keys and the stack of mail in his hand on the countertop and walks forward to his only recently no-longer-bedridden paramour.

His boxes have never been scared _speechless_ before, but Wade only feels it secondhand, concern overriding his caution.

Thing is, he knows exactly what they would be saying right now if they were being their usual chatterbox selves. Knows now that their suspicions are probably right too.

He just doesn’t care.

_“Peter,”_ he whispers one more time once he’s right up behind him, and puts one of his hands on his shoulder. He is unsurprised by the jerky yet strangely fluid motion in which the shorter man suddenly spins around to face him, a spindly smooth sort of grace reminiscent of one of his heroic persona’s namesakes.

Wade has only enough time to see that Peter’s pupils are blown so wide, his irises are swallowed up by the black, what little outer edge that can be seen tinged not with brown but with red. Then there are super-strong arms pulling him in close and teeth which usually belong in the most adorably crooked smile Wade has ever seen tearing into the pulse point at his neck.

The boxes break their silence at last, Italics only to make nonsense cries and shriek inconsolably. Bold is a little more eloquent in his screaming.

**‘Fuuuuuck, fuckfuckfuckfuckFUCKFUCK, what the FUCK DUDE, why would you do this to us, I fucking TOLD YOU THIS WOULD HAPPEN! _I! FUCKING! TOLD! YOU! SO!!’_**

Despite the fact that this is possibly the loudest the boxes have ever yelled at him, Wade finds it easy to tune them out and focus instead on how good it feels to have Peter’s arms around him again, even if they are squeezing him tightly enough to bruise, and how good his hair smells despite going unwashed for days as it tickles his nose.

If he could talk around the teeth in his throat, he might even have murmured a soft word or two of encouragement while Baby Boy grips him close and takes what he so clearly needs.

He cradles the back of his boy’s head gently with his free hand for as long as he has the strength and consciousness left in him to keep his arm up.

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New tags added, necessary but fairly predictable ones considering Wade Wilson is involved. Angst and fluff ahead.

_“Mmm…”_ The moan Peter makes is the luxuriant, satisfied purr of the wondrously full. He’d absconded with his prize to a darkened corner of the room where walls meet ceiling at some point during his feasting, clutching his prey closer now like its deadweight is nothing to him while he clings to the plaster with nothing more than the microscopic little hairs on his back and the bottoms of his curled-up feet.

The neck he’s still nuzzling into isn’t cold yet, but it stopped baring any more of that precious liquid to him some time ago, the body attached to it still and soundless, no breathing, no heartbeat. It is in the same moment of clarity when he becomes wholly aware of this fact that he also remembers he is _not actually a fucking spider_ and the corpse in his arms is most certainly not supposed to be _prey._

He drops from the ceiling in shock, at the last second turning in mid-air so it’s his own back that makes impact with the floor and pushes the air out of his lungs in a pained, _“oof!”_ The body now on top of him continues to make no noise at all because…because…

Peter presses his face tightly into the man’s shoulder above him until he almost can’t breathe, so it will muffle the sound and not alert his and Wade’s neighbors when his mouth opens again and Peter screams, and sobs, and screams.

After that, Peter lies still, almost as still as Wade above him except for the tremor in his hands and how tightly he’s squeezing the other man’s torso, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling because if he looks at Wade’s dead face again he’s going to start screaming again and never, ever stop. Sunlight creeps in at a steady march through the gaps in the curtains.

Peter only stirs into movement again when the dead body he’s holding becomes an unconscious one with a faint, weak heartbeat starting up against his own chest and faint, weak breaths tickling against his cheek. He doesn’t even feel _relief,_ too emptied for that, and only acknowledges about himself in a detached sort of way that had those breaths never come, he would have merely continued to lie there, disassociated and catatonic, until someone came and busted down the door to investigate the smell.

He lifts the man up and carries him like a child to their bedroom, laying him gently against the rumpled sheets so he can be comfortable when he wakes, which will likely be a couple of hours yet while his body takes time to heal. After a few long, tense seconds of standing at the foot of the bed and watching the man’s chest rise and fall, he eventually turns away and enters the adjoining washroom, shutting the door softly behind him.

The sight of his own reflection in the mirror is enough to make him want to vomit—more accurately, _should_ make him want to vomit. If Wade were up, he would likely make some quip about how at least Peter still _has_ a reflection, but Peter can’t find the humor in it when his face is covered in dried, sticky tear tracks from his earlier crying that are clearly visible because they are clearly more than _just_ water, tinged as they are faintly in red and that murky brown of blood left to dry too long on skin.

At least his eyes are still hazel instead of that dramatic looking, movie-monster red Morbius’s always are…or is that only because he’s… _fed?_ Morbius must be hungry _all the time_ if that’s the case, the poor bastard. He has a better appreciation for the man’s usual level of self-control suddenly, recent transgressions aside.

It is only after he carefully washes his face and pats it dry that he trusts himself enough to verbalize without shrieking again or choking, and allows himself to squeeze his eyes shut and pour all of his horror, self-flagellation, and self-pity into one quietly whispered, _“Oh my fucking god.”_ Understatement of the goddamn century. He’s a vampire. _He’s a fucking vampire._ What the fucking holy fuck. He usually doesn’t cuss this much even in the comforting solitude of his own thoughts but… _fuck._

 _You can have another mental breakdown later, Parker,_ he chastises himself. Right now he’s got a recently resurrected boyfriend who is going to need to replenish his blood sugar levels by even more than normal, and that’s already _a lot_ when Wade has to come back from the dead and always wakes up famished.

He grabs his keys and his hoodie, but on the way out he pauses, thinking, and meanders first over to the window. He needs to know. He pulls the curtain back and stretches his hand out under the morning light streaming in. Peter takes it as a good sign that it doesn’t immediately burst into flame or boils or start smoking or anything.

He takes it one step farther and opens the window to thrust his hand directly into the UV rays outside. Nothing, at first, but cautiously he holds it there. After several long minutes that seem to take forever, it starts to…not itch, exactly, but just builds steadily into a growing discomfort not unlike the terrible skin-crawly feeling he gets when he’s in sensory overload and cannot stand the mere thought of letting even the softest of fabrics brush against his skin without recoiling like he’s in pain. He takes his hand back before it gets that far and closes the window, and on the way out of the lobby when he gets downstairs he pulls his hood up far enough to cast shadows over his face and stuffs both hands into the front pockets of his jacket.

He squints against the light once he gets outside, wondering if it’s genuinely _brighter_ to his senses than he’s used to or if he’s just thinking too hard about it. After a couple of minutes of walking, he decides he’s not imagining it and hurriedly detours to one of those awful, touristy, probably unlicensed shopping stalls to pay entirely too much for a pair of cheap sunglasses that don’t look too kitschy. It’s a very good thing Wade is weirdly obsessive about making sure Peter’s wallet is never low on spending cash to almost ridiculous sugar daddy levels. They’d actually fought about it in the early days of their relationship, Peter angry and upset that the man might literally be trying to _buy his love,_ before he’d understood that this was just one of the many awkward ways Wade liked to show people that he cared.

It’s possible Peter’s sense of smell might be heightened as well, which is not great, but not as bad as he might have expected either. It’s just that there are people _everywhere,_ and as much as he’d like to think that bothers him because of all the intermingled perfumes and shampoos on some and unwashed BO on others, the truth is that underneath that is a rich variety of something warm and coppery, which he’d never thought of as pleasant before but considers wonderful now, and if he wanted to try he could pick them apart enough to tell who is sickly and feeble and not worth the effort versus who is healthy and strong and oh god no, _no,_ stop that, brain. _Stop._

Like an intrusive thought that won’t go away, this only makes him more aware of the fact that he has from the moment he stepped out been unconsciously tracking everyone’s movements, idly assessing every person on the street as viable prey or not based on walking patterns, whether or not they’re alone or in a group, how alert or distracted they are, and so on, all with the casual ease of a predator who is not hungry at the moment but always ready to seize an opportunity the second that changes.

He halts in his tracks and squeezes his eyes closed again, ignoring the stream of New Yorkers who grumble as he disrupts the flow of foot traffic and brush past, some even jostling by bumping into his shoulder, and focuses on just…just _breathing normally_ and not spiraling into panicked hyperventilation because that’s honestly the last thing he should do in a crowd full of people all trying to get somewhere.

Is this what it’s like for Morbius all the time too? No wonder the man is always so desperate to seek a cure no matter the potentially catastrophic consequences. How does he live like this? _How is Peter supposed to?_

It takes much, much longer than he’d like for Peter to find his calm, long enough for the people behind him several paces back to have noticed the way everyone ahead of them forks to the right or left around some obstacle and follow the flow naturally.

It’s a relief when he gets to the donut shop and the scent of baked goods hits him as tantalizingly as it’s supposed to, making his stomach gurgle in reminder that he hasn’t eaten actual food yet and still needs it. He might have honestly died inside a little bit more if it had turned out he couldn’t handle real meals that weren’t _people_ anymore.

He walks out a little bit later with a huge sack full of boxes overstuffed with a few dozen assorted pastries and another bag laden with bottles of orange juice to replace the carton he’d scarfed this morning, both hands also full with two large cups of sickeningly sweet coffee oversaturated with those caramel and vanilla and chocolate syrups Wade likes only when he’s on a post-death binge. Peter might even take a sip of one just so the man can giggle at the disgusted face he makes. All of it together still makes for a shitty excuse of an apology gift, but it’s all Peter’s got in his arsenal at the moment.

Nothing he says or does can be enough to make up for it anyway. Wade is likely to make light of what happened like it’s no big deal, but Peter is nowhere near as lenient on himself. Not even close.

The other man is still asleep when he gets back, so Peter sets the bags on the bed and the coffee cups on the nightstand, opening the ventilation lid on one enough to let the scent waft. Then he crouches on the footboard of the bedframe in classic Gargoyle Spidey pose—or as Wade likes to call it, his “Lexington pose” because Peter apparently reminds him of the character from the 90s _Gargoyles_ cartoon—and waits. Protective and hypervigilant, like a guard dog. Also wary, ready to spring back on a moment’s notice at so much as a discontented sigh from the other man, uncertain of what his welcome will be like when Wade wakes.

Peter has always been good at keeping still in his Spidey poses without fidgeting, as long as there’s a reason for it, but in this case he might as well actually be a statue. He doesn’t even dart his eyes away to obsessively count the minutes on Wade’s alarm clock, something he normally can’t help fixating on after Wade dies.

Maybe he’s still in Death’s realm, despite the steady rise and fall of his chest, and they’re having a long chat about how much of a better girlfriend She is than Peter, since at least She’s never _murdered him_ even though that would directly benefit Her by granting them more time together. Wade has always insisted that She’s not like that, that She doesn’t think the same way mortals do and that even though they’re in love it’s still not _the same_ as what he and Peter have. Peter had done a fairly admirable job himself of burying his own jealousy once he realized Death was not just a metaphor or a concept but an actual entity in some kind of poly relationship with his boyfriend, yet apparently not a threat to the otherwise single-minded dedication and commitment Wade has to Peter in his living hours. It doesn’t stop the irrational fears from hitting him in a sickening wave now.

Wade stirs at last while the coffee is still decently lukewarm, stretching his muscles out and groaning with the pop of his joints. Peter’s wafting tactic must have worked because Wade reaches for the coffee first on instinct and immediately downs the first cup in one long pull. He crushes the empty cup in his hand and tosses it across the room before fully sitting up, a gesture that would normally elicit a half-amused, half-annoyed huff from Peter even if he’s always a little more laidback and lenient of Wade’s messy tendencies when he’s just risen from the dead. Wade seems even in his still half-asleep state to realize the silence in this case is unusual, and looks up to find Peter still looking at him from the same crouched position.

“What’chu doing all the way over there?” he asks, voice still gruff from sleep. _“C’mere,”_ he says and makes grabby hands in Peter’s direction. The younger man hesitates, but ultimately gives in and crawls over to him, letting himself be pulled into the older man’s arms in a sort of upright spooning position. Only after Wade gets some cuddling and murmuring sleepily into Peter’s neck in does he grab one of the boxes laid out beside them.

Wade easily demolishes half of an entire box on his own in minutes, Peter still picking at his first donut nervously with his fingers to eat it in tiny, bird-like pieces and staring intently at it and nowhere else.

“Is that…okay for you to be having?” Wade asks, gesturing to the torn-up pastry in Peter’s hand with his own half-eaten one. Peter didn’t expect the man to forget how they got to this situation, but it still makes him flinch a little to have the elephant in the room already being addressed, albeit in a roundabout sort of way. And trust Wade’s first concern to be about whether or not normal food is good for Peter’s digestion instead of the more obvious factors literally anyone else would be screaming at him about by now. He doesn’t deserve this man.

Peter shrugs. “I think so,” he mumbles, voice barely above a whisper. “If not, guess we’ll find out when I can’t be dragged away from the toilet in a few hours,” he tries to joke, but it sounds weak even to his own ears. Becoming a bloodsucker clearly didn’t make him suave and sophisticated. The movies _lied._

“I’m really, really sorry,” he says next, would have said first right away if he wasn’t giving Wade time to wake and recoup first. “I know that’s not good enough, _nowhere near good enough,_ I’ve fucked everything up and we’re going to have to talk about this—”

“You did not fuck up _anything,”_ Wade tells him firmly, just like he’d been afraid of, so Peter shakes his head in denial and tries to speak again, only to be cut off again immediately. _“You didn’t._ Look at me.” Peter does, or tries to anyway. Wade is one of the few he can usually scrounge up at least some approximation of eye contact for, can even manage the real thing for on good days, but this…this is not one of those days. “Do I look dead right at this moment, or feverish?” Peter shakes his head again, knowing Wade prefers getting answers even to rhetorical questions.

Wade tightens his hold around the smaller man, partly to draw him into a closer hug, but also as if he half-expects Peter to squirm away otherwise. “Look, frankly what happened earlier was best case scenario.” Peter stiffens, but doesn’t pull away. “I can’t die _or_ turn, which is more than can be said for just about anybody else who could have walked through that door.” Peter cringes because he knows the man is right. He’d thought about it earlier himself but hadn’t allowed himself to linger on that long, partly because it would have ratcheted his anxiety up more to consider the worst case scenarios that could have been, partly because it felt too much like letting himself off the hook for even considering it in such pragmatic terms.

“Lucky for you, you have a very tasty boyfriend who doesn’t mind a little rough handling now and then,” Wade says, waggling his hairless eyebrows. “And I have a boyfriend who, sure, might be a little more _high maintenance_ to keep around now, but also might be into a bit of kinkier stuff now that that door’s been opened.” Peter can’t help it—he laughs helplessly just as the man obviously intended.

“Well, if that—if that’s all it takes to make it up to you…” Peter starts with a giggle but trails off more soberly.

“You have nothing to make up for, baby boy.” Peter ducks his head, not really believing that himself but knowing better than to argue the point right now. “Not now, not ever.” Peter doesn’t like the wording of that, the way it seems to imply that Wade thinks he’ll do it _again._ He clutches the other man tighter as well almost protectively, which is a little ironic, he realizes.

“What if I do it to someone else?” he asks in a whisper. “What if I’m _not safe_ to be around anymore, to keep being Spider-Man or go back to work or school or…or…?”

“Then I guess you’ll just have to stay at home and be my cute little kept man,” Wade quips immediately. “Tell me something though. On your way to get these and back,” he says, shaking the now empty box of donuts, “did you hurt anybody?”

“No, but—”

“But nothing. _That’s good,”_ Wade says with relish. “You can call in to work and school while we figure out what your new limits are, I’ll keep an eye on you for the next little while when you go out as Spidey, we’ll wait til we’re _sure_ it’s okay and be extra careful bringing you around May and Ellie at first—” _That_ is what gives Peter the strength to wrest the conversation back, the other man’s blithe overconfidence that could very well put his aunt and Wade’s daughter at risk.

“—But I thought about it!” he all but snaps. “A lot. Not like I wanted to, but like I _could_ if I was feeling just peckish enough,” he adds in a dry tone that is somewhat undercut by the way he unconsciously bares his teeth. “Wade, _you don’t understand,_ I was just walking around like everything was normal but it _wasn’t._ I can’t go outside anymore without thinking about _killing people_ just…just because!” His voice takes on a note of that earlier hysteria as he thinks about it again, trying to get Wade to see the problem, but the older man just looks back at him with the same expression as before.

“Intrusive thoughts about murder,” Wade says in a completely casual tone once he’s sure Peter is done, nodding his head sagely. He smiles. “Welcome to the club, baby boy.”

Peter gapes at him for a second. “Wade, that…that is not funny. I’m being serious here.”

“So am I. And it is kinda funny, once you get used to it,” Wade assures him. “I only think about it, like, _a hundred times_ a minute every time we’re out in public after all. Gotta get creative with it to keep it interesting.”

“You… _really?”_ Peter had known this on some level already, of course he had, but he’d never really _considered_ the implications of his lover’s frequent “jokes” about all the colorfully gruesome things he’d do to the guy who cut him off in traffic, what he vowed he’d do to the person who invented tapioca for love and honor after Peter ordered a bubble tea once without knowing what it was and made a Very Unhappy Whiny Noise coupled with a Very Unhappy Scrunched-Up Face at the Very, Very Bad Texture in his mouth when he sucked up one of the slimy, solid balls through his straw (and embarrassingly enough, almost actually cried when he took another sip anyway to prove his manliness or something idiotic like that and got another one), et cetera, et cetera, and so on.

“So I think about stabbing the guy in the line ahead of me in cartoonishly violent ways when he takes too long ordering his hot dog, and you think about gobbling him like he _is_ a giant, dancing cartoon hot dog,” Wade says, startling another giggle out of the younger man. “Same difference,” he shrugs.

He probably shouldn’t find that as comforting as he does, but Peter has long accepted that he’s not exactly normal since _way_ before his life took its latest strange turn. He snuggles closer, burying his face in the other man’s neck, and only thinks _a little bit_ about how nice it had felt between his teeth earlier, so there’s even some progress already on that front.

Wade doesn’t stiffen at all, which is even more reassuring, and just cards his fingers through Peter’s hair like always at the familiar gesture. “I’ll teach you some tips on how to manage it, if you want,” he adds softly. “We’ll make this work.” _Fuck,_ Peter is so in love with this man.

“Okay,” he murmurs. The truth is Peter’s not so sure he believes that himself, but he _wants_ to, and he trusts Wade, so he allows himself to be lulled and soothed, basking in the sensation of being held and the warm, sugary, intermixed smell of donuts and Wade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Final Endnote as of 07/07/2018: I originally had plans to continue this story for a couple more chapters, but after much contemplation and some soul-searching, I have decided instead to let it stand as is. The conclusion of this chapter is satisfying enough for me, and the rest I had planned to carry it further just isn't working for me anymore. I know I swore up and down before to many commenters below that I was going to keep going with this, but I just don't feel inspired enough by the ideas that sparked this fic anymore to actually do so. If I ever do change my mind and decide to pick back up where I left off after all, I will edit the note and tags again and update accordingly, but that is looking increasingly unlikely as more time passes. Thank you all so much for your patience, your understanding, and your interest in this story to begin with. It means a lot to me!**


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